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From: rcd@opus.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Annotating Annotated Annotators
Message-ID: <460@opus.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 8-May-84 00:30:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: opus.460
Posted: Tue May  8 00:30:08 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 13-May-84 00:30:54 EDT
References: <438@opus.UUCP> <752@akgua.UUCP>
Organization: NBI, Boulder
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<>
>Does Carl (Billions and Billions) Sagan qualify as a responsible
>man of Science ?
>
>On the Cosmos series I heard and saw brother Carl state without
>qualification that EVOLUTION IS FACT...

First, yes, as far as I can tell Carl Sagan qualifies as a responsible man
of science.  (Really, you don't have to capitalize it - it's not a deity.)

However, I absolutely refuse to believe that anyone as loquacious as Carl
Sagan said as few as three words to define the situation.  Anyone care to
put this in sufficient context to allow scrutiny?  (Or, as a counter, do I
get to pick 3 words out of the Bible to quote and show it's an awful book?)

There's a nasty problem here:  Carl Sagan almost certainly knows the
differences among fact, postulate, theory, proof, etc. - but as our
talk-first/think-later President has so aptly demonstrated, the average
American may have some trouble with the concepts.  (You may recall Mr.
Reagan having stated that evolution is "only a theory" - and in fact one
way of looking at it is as a body of theory - but that's because there
isn't much else that evolution, or ANY OTHER model of origins, CAN be.  It
CAN'T be a law, and it can't be proven, in the proper sense of the words
"law" and "proven" in scientific discourse.)

But I digress.  (Oh, you noticed!)  So how does one respond to the likes of
Reagan's misconception?  Well, if "theory" has come to mean "hunch" then
maybe we can use "fact" to mean "well-founded theory".  I don't know if
that's what Sagan is up to, but it's possible.  There is Sagan the
scientist and Sagan the entertainer...
-- 
...Nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile.		Dick Dunn
{hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd				(303) 444-5710 x3086